Bitcoin surges past $16,000

'This is irrational exuberance. We're not in a normal two-way trading market'

Published: 12/07/2017 at 6:21 PM

(Bloomberg) Bitcoin surged past $16,000 for the first time on Thursday, with frenzied demand to trade the cryptocurrency buckling one of the largest exchanges just days before the first U.S. futures contracts begin trading.

Bitcoin’s rally of more than $3,000 in the past 24 hours continues to defy its legions of skeptics, as mainstream demand for the world’s largest cryptocurrency explodes. Investors flocking to open new accounts or place orders Thursday left Coinbase, the largest U.S. exchange, warning of outages and slow transactions.

Trezor, a wallet service, tweeted that it’s having “minor issues” with its servers, while Bitfinex, the largest bitcoin exchange in the world, said on Twitter that it has been under a denial of service attack for several days and that it recently got worse.